AUTOBIOGRAPHY

    That was a hot boiling summer day. Based on our school regulations, we couldn’t turn on the air conditioner until 9:00 AM. Therefore, before 9:00 AM, I had no choice but to try to imagine that I was soaked in cold water and enjoyed a pint of chocolate ice cream in order to make myself feel better; however, ten minutes passed, and it turned out that this stupid method didn’t work at all, so I was still sweating like a pig. But that situation was not the worst. The deadly worst thing was the news that whether I was admitted to the Department of English, NCCU, or not would be published at 8:00 AM on that day, so you can imagine how nervous I felt at that time. I got butterflies in my stomach and could hardly breathe. I really felt that I was in hell, a hell built by scorching heat and restless panic. Finally, it was 8:00 AM. I opened my cell phone and checked out my text message. And I saw it, a text message from the Department of English, NCCU, then I knew I was accepted to the college. I was over the moon and almost jumped out of my chair. Hundreds of thoughts were running through my head at that moment, most of them were like, “Oh my gosh, I was going to study in the Department of English!” But suddenly, one thought which was that whether studying in the Department of English was what I really wanted or not emerged out of nowhere and occupied all of my minds immediately. I asked myself again and again. To find its answer, I started to look back on my English learning experience.

        When I was studied in elementary school, I was taught by foreign English teachers. I went to that cram school after school class twice a week, and actually, that was not a very impressive experience, perhaps because I was too little to remember things. However, there was still one thing I couldn’t forget even when I grew up, which is that in the cram school, we could only speak English and anyone who spoke Chinese would be punished. I was the one who used to be punished; whenever I chatted with my friends in Chinese, and a teacher would come here and stand behind me and say, “Sandy, you knew the rules”. I used to suspect that those teachers had ears that could hear everything around them. After she said those words, I knew I had to sit on the chair and write down “I would never say Chinese in class again” ten times on the paper. Therefore, my early experience was not so good, which led to dislike English at first. However, this experience also helped me cultivate my English listening ability, which made me go more smoothly on the road of learning English. Afterward, when I grew up and studied in junior high school, my aunt who married to an American and moved there many years ago came back to Taiwan in order to visit her parents, more surprisingly, her husband came with her too. Compared to the early experience, this one was much better. My aunt’s husband was really kind and humorous and we almost played together all the time during the period when he stayed in Taiwan. At that time, he taught me English through games and there was one game that impressed me deeply. That was a game that could help you remember vocabulary words and also know how to spell them. He would make a lot of vocabulary cards, and scattered them on the floor, then he would say one vocabulary word and see who could find that vocabulary word first. In this game, I was the winner every time, but I thought that it was because he lost the game on purpose. In spite of this, I still had a lot of fun and gained a sense of achievement. This memory was full of happiness and meant a lot to me, for it was the time when I started being interested in English. Thanks to my uncle, memorizing vocabulary words was not a hardship for me anymore. After this time, I began learning English by myself. At first, I studied English only for tests, but afterward, when I found that I could get good grades on tests, I started being more earnest on learning English. The more knowledge I learned about English, the more I liked this language. I memorized vocabulary words and worked hard on a lot of test sheets which only had multiple-choice questions on them. With these ways of practicing English, I could get good grades on tests all the time in junior high school. Therefore, I thought that I could make my English better and better through those ways of learning English. However, when I studied in senior high school, I realized that I was totally wrong. I did a bad job in English writing composition. Whenever I tried to write an English composition, I just sit there and stared at my paper sheets with no idea coming into my mind. I knew there was something wrong with my English learning ways; I couldn’t just memorize vocabulary words without knowing how to use them to make a sentence. Therefore, I started changing my ways of learning English. I started looking at some well-done articles and highlighted some fabulous sentences; I would also figure out how vocabulary words could be used in a sentence before I memorized them. Fortunately, I met a really good English teacher, and she gave me a lot of useful strategies and pieces of advice to help me improve my English writing skills. She also encouraged me to read a lot of articles with different topics and find out how those authors described things or situations, but most importantly, you had to practice a lot. Based on her advice, I almost wrote an English composition with different topics every day when the college entrance exam was around the corner, and I made good progress in English writing. It was her that made me want to become an English teacher in the future.           

        After recalling my English learning experience, I finally got a conclusion. I liked to learn English, and I was eager to be a person who could speak and use English like a native speaker.  Therefore, I decided to study in the Department of English. Although I knew I had a lot of room for improvement, I would work hard and keep moving. Nevertheless, the moment when I was determined to study in the department of English, there came from a series of new questions. Would I regret it? What would happen if the knowledge that the Department of English gave me was not what I wanted to learn? What would happen if everything in the Department of English was a far cry from my expectations? I had totally no idea then. But I still wanted to follow my heart and not to worry about so much, putting those questions aside. Some day, they would be answered.  

        Now, I am studying in the Department of English. I can still remember how worried I feel on that day, which I had mentioned mention above, but now I have the answer. No, I don’t regret it. My choice is definitely right.